Fostering a Strategic Outreach Culture
Do's
- Do foster a proactive mindset and creative thinking among staff by incorporating outreach priorities into staff meetings, group discussions and job descriptions or performance goals.
- Do define a framework for identifying outreach objectives and prioritizing opportunities by incorporating the results from a stakeholder analysis and/or SWOT analysis.
- Do analyze the office’s relationship with stakeholders to determine which ones need to be cultivated or strengthened.
- Do assess the environment when developing outreach strategies to capitalize on the office’s strengths and opportunities and mitigate its weaknesses and threats.
- Do ensure proposed outreach: furthers the office’s strategic goals; is a valuable and beneficial use of resources; is likely to achieve press goals and reach desired stakeholders; and can overcome obstacles to their success.
- Do evaluate outreach activities using internal and external feedback to learn from the experience and conduct more successful activities and decision-making in the future.
Don'ts
- Don't fall into a reactive or comfortable pattern in which the office focuses solely on incoming requests and relies too heavily on core supporters.
- Don't allow staff to view outreach as calculated or inappropriate when it is actually strategic and can make the office more effective in serving constituents.
- Don't limit outreach activities to the Member. Staff must help establish and expand the Member’s presence and image in the community, communicate the Member’s message and attain the Member’s goals.
- Don't forget to solicit input from the DC staff when developing outreach plans. There are important roles for both offices to play in these activities.
- Don't undertake new outreach activities without evaluating them against your strategic objectives and determining if trade-offs need to be made with existing activities.
- Don't use after action reviews as a tool to assign fault or blame when activities do not go as well as planned.
Details
Copyright 2010, Congressional Management Foundation
Paperback: 244 pages
Publisher: Congressional Management Foundation; 3rd edition (March 8, 2010); Reprinted in 2017
ISBN-13: 978-1-930473-13-3
Dimensions: 7.5 x 9.25 inches
- Download the entire book in PDF:
Keeping It Local: A Guide for Managing Congressional District & State Offices(2.5 MB)
Pricing for Hardcopies
Price: $25.00
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